Hungary in World War II

During World War II, the Kingdom of Hungary was a member of the Axis powers.^[1] In the 1930s, the Kingdom of Hungary relied on increased trade with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to pull itself out of the Great Depression. Hungarian politics and foreign policy had become more stridently nationalistic by 1938, and Hungary adopted an irredentist policy similar to Germany's, attempting to incorporate ethnic Hungarian areas in neighboring countries into Hungary. Hungary benefited territorially from its relationship with the Axis. Settlements were negotiated regarding territorial disputes with the Czechoslovak Republic, the Slovak Republic, and the Kingdom of Romania. On November 20, 1940, Hungary became the fourth member to join the Axis powers when it signed the Tripartite Pact.^[2] The following year, Hungarian forces participated in the invasion of Yugoslavia and the invasion of the Soviet Union. Their participation was noted by German observers for its particular cruelty, with occupied peoples subjected to arbitrary violence. Hungarian volunteers were sometimes referred to as engaging in "murder tourism."^[3]

After two years of war against the

Approximately 300,000 Hungarian soldiers and more than 600,000 civilians died during World War II, including between 450,000 and 606,000

. Hungary's borders were returned to their pre-1938 lines after its surrender.

Movement to the right

In Hungary, the joint effect of the Great Depression and the Treaty of Trianon resulted in shifting the political mood of the country towards the right. In 1932, the regent Miklós Horthy appointed a new prime minister, Gyula Gömbös. Gömbös was identified with the Hungarian National Defence Association (Magyar Országos Véderő Egylet, or MOVE). He led Hungarian international policy towards closer cooperation with Germany, and started an effort to assimilate minorities in Hungary. Gömbös signed a trade agreement with Germany (21 February 1934)^[9] that led to fast expansion of the economy, drawing Hungary out of the Great Depression but making the country dependent on the German economy for both raw materials and export revenues.

Gömbös advocated a number of social reforms,

. He succeeded in gaining control of the ministries of finance, industry, and defense and in replacing several key military officers with his supporters. In October 1936, he died due to kidney problems without realizing his goals.

Hungary used its relationship with Germany to attempt to revise the Treaty of Trianon. In 1938, Hungary openly repudiated the treaty's restrictions on its armed forces. Adolf Hitler gave promises to return lost territories and threats of military intervention and economic pressure to encourage the Hungarian Government to support the policies and goals of Nazi Germany. In 1935, a Hungarian fascist party, the Arrow Cross Party, led by Ferenc Szálasi, was founded. Gömbös' successor, Kálmán Darányi, attempted to appease both Nazis and Hungarian antisemites by passing the First Jewish Law, which set quotas limiting Jews to 20% of positions in several professions. The law satisfied neither the Nazis nor Hungary's own radicals, and when Darányi resigned in May 1938 Béla Imrédy was appointed prime minister.

Imrédy's attempts to improve Hungary's diplomatic relations with the

.

Territorial expansion

.

In October 1938, the

First Vienna Award

On 2 November 1938, the First Vienna Award transferred to Hungary parts of southern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia from Czechoslovakia, an area amounting to 11,927 km² and a population of 869,299 (86.5% of which were Hungarians^[11]). Between 5 and 10 November, Hungarian armed forces occupied the newly transferred territories.^[10]

Occupation of Carpatho-Ukraine

In March 1939, the Czecho-Slovak Republic was dissolved,

, also known as the "Little War", ended with Hungary gaining the easternmost strip of Slovakia, 1697 km².

Second Vienna Award

In September 1940, with troops massing on both sides of the Hungarian-Romanian border, war was averted by the Second Vienna Award. This award transferred to Hungary the northern half of Transylvania, with a total area of 43,492 km² and a total population of 2,578,100. Regarding demographics, the Romanian census from 1930 counted 38% Hungarians and 49% Romanians, while the Hungarian census from 1941 counted 53.5% Hungarians and 39.1% Romanians.^[13] While according to the Romanian estimations in 1940 prior to the Second Vienna Award, about 1,300,000 people or 50% of the population was Romanian and according to the Hungarian estimations in 1940 shortly following the Second Vienna Award, about 1,150,000 people or 48% of the population was Romanian.^[14] The establishment of Hungarian rule met sometimes insurgency, most notable cases are the Ip and Treznea incidents in Northern Transylvania.

Occupation and annexation of Yugoslav territories

After

movement.

Administration of Greater Hungary

Main article:

Administrative divisions of the Kingdom of Hungary (1941–45)

Following the two Vienna awards, a number of counties that had been lost in whole or part by the

were restored to Hungary. As a result, some previously county of temporary united administration – in Hungarian közigazgatásilag egyelőre egyesített vármegye (k.e.e. vm.) – were de-merged and restored to their pre-1920 boundaries.

The region of

as official languages.

Military campaigns

Invasion of Yugoslavia

On 20 November 1940, under pressure from Germany, Hungarian prime minister

, who was also under German pressure.

On 25 March 1941, Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact on behalf of Yugoslavia. Two days later, a Yugoslavian coup d'état removed Prince Paul, replaced him with pro-British King Peter, and threatened the success of the planned German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Hitler asked the Hungarians to support his invasion of Yugoslavia. He promised to return some territory to Hungary in exchange for military cooperation. On 3 April 1941, unable to prevent Hungary's participation in the war alongside Germany, Teleki committed suicide. The right-wing radical László Bárdossy succeeded him as prime minister.

Three days after Teleki's death, the

.

Invasion of the Soviet Union

Toldi I

tank used during the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.

Hungary did not immediately participate in the

although it is plausible that Soviet bombers mistook Kassa for nearby Prešov in Slovakia. Hungary declared war against the Soviets on 27 June 1941, less than 24 hours after the Košice bombing raid.

On 1 July 1941, under German instruction, the Hungarian Carpathian Group (

6th Soviet Army

and the 12th Soviet Army. This action resulted in the capture or destruction of twenty Soviet divisions.

In July 1941 the Hungarian government transferred responsibility for 18,000 Jews from Carpato-Ruthenian Hungary to the

Nazi mobile killing units

shot all but two thousand of these individuals.^[21][22] Bárdossy then passed the Third Jewish Law in August 1941, prohibiting marriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews.

Six months after the mass murder at Kamianets-Podilskyi in January 1942, Hungarian troops massacred 3,000 Serbian and Jewish hostages near Novi Sad, Yugoslavia.

Worried about Hungary's increasing reliance on Germany, Admiral Horthy forced Bárdossy to resign and replaced him with Miklós Kállay, a veteran conservative of Bethlen's government. Kállay continued Bárdossy's policy of supporting Germany against the Red Army while also initiating negotiations with the Allies. Hungarian participation in Operation Barbarossa during 1941 was limited in part because the country had no real large army before 1939, and time to train and equip troops had been short. But by 1942, tens of thousands of Hungarians were fighting on the eastern front in the Royal Hungarian Army.

During the

. Ignoring German orders to stand and fight to the death, the bewildered Hungarian troops, fighting without antitank weaponry or armored support, turned and reclusive. Harassed by partisan groups and Soviet air attacks, and having to endure the Russian winter weather, they tried in vain to retreat. Most of the survivors were taken prisoner by the Soviet army, and total casualties numbered more than 100,000 men. The Hungarian army ceased to exist as an effective fighting force, and the Germans pulled them from the front.

While Kállay was prime minister, the Jews endured increased economic and

and 1944 Horthy secretly started peace talks with the Soviet Union and attempted to create the National Centrist-Governance (Nemzeti Középkormány) through the series of secret negotiations with the Hungarian Front (an anti-German rebel group) to push back the management's pro-German far-right endeavors. Berlin was already suspicious of the Kállay's government, and in September 1943, the German General Staff prepared a project to invade and occupy Hungary. At the request of the Allies, there were no connections made with the Soviets.

German occupation of Hungary

Aware of Kállay's deceit and fearing that Hungary might conclude a separate peace, in March 1944 Hitler launched

, and Romanian troops if they did not comply. The threat of these ancestral enemies on Hungarian soil was seen as far worse than German control. Hungary kept entire divisions on the Romanian border while the troops of both nations were fighting and dying together in the Russian winter.

As the Soviets pushed westward, Sztojay's government mustered new armies. The Hungarian troops again suffered terrible losses, but now had a motive to protect their homeland from Soviet occupation.

In August 1944, Horthy replaced Sztójay with the anti-fascist general Géza Lakatos. Under the Lakatos regime, acting interior minister Béla Horváth ordered gendarmes to prevent the deportation of Hungarian citizens. The Germans were unhappy with the situation but could not do a great deal about it. Horthy's actions thus bought the Jews of Budapest a few months of time.

Soviet occupation of Hungary

In September 1944, Soviet forces crossed the Hungarian border. On 15 October, Horthy announced that Hungary had asked for an armistice with the Soviet Union. The Hungarian army ignored Horthy's orders, fighting desperately to keep the Soviets out. The Germans launched Operation Panzerfaust and, by kidnapping his son Miklós Horthy Jr., forced Horthy to abrogate the armistice, depose the Lakatos government, and name the leader of the Arrow Cross Party, Ferenc Szálasi, as prime minister. Horthy resigned and Szálasi became prime minister of a new Government of National Unity (Nemzeti Összefogás Kormánya) controlled by the Germans. Horthy was taken to Germany as a prisoner but survived the war and spent his last years exiled in Portugal, dying in 1957.

In cooperation with the Nazis, Szálasi attempted to resume deportations of Jews, but Germany's rapidly disintegrating communications largely prevented this from happening. Nonetheless, the Arrow Cross launched a reign of terror against the Jews of Budapest. Thousands were tortured, raped and murdered in the last months of the war, their property looted or destroyed. Swedish diplomat

.

Soon Hungary itself became a battlefield. Szálasi promised

. But success was costly and, unable to replace lost armor and heavy artillery munitions, the Hungarian Second Army was defeated on 1 December 1944. The remnants of the Second Army were incorporated into the Third Army.

In October 1944, the Hungarian First Army was attached to the German 1st Panzer Army, participating defensively against the Red Army's advance toward Budapest. On 28 December 1944, a provisional government was formed in Hungary under acting prime minister Béla Miklós. Szálasi and Miklós each claimed to be the legitimate head of government. The Germans and pro-German Hungarians loyal to Szálasi fought on.

The Soviets and Romanians completed the encirclement of Budapest on 29 December 1944. The battle for the city turned into the

^: 38

The remaining German and Hungarian units within Budapest surrendered on 13 February 1945. Although the German forces in Hungary were generally defeated, the Germans had one more surprise for the Soviets. On 6 March 1945, the Germans launched the

^: 182

After the failed offensive, the Germans in Hungary were eliminated. Most of what remained of the Hungarian Third Army was destroyed about 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of Budapest between 16 and 25 March 1945. From 26 March and 15 April, the Soviets and Bulgarians launched the

. By the start of April, the Germans, with the Arrow Cross in tow, had completely vacated Hungarian soil.

Retreat into Germany

Officially, Soviet operations in Hungary ended on 4 April 1945, when the last German troops were expelled. Some pro-fascist Hungarians such as Szálasi escaped—for a time—with the Germans. A few pro-German Hungarian units fought on until the end of the war. Units such as the Szent László Infantry Division ended the war in southern Austria.

On 8 May 1945 at 4:10 p.m., Major General Stanley Eric Reinhart's 259th Infantry Regiment was authorized to accept the surrender of the 1st Hungarian Cavalry Division and of the 1st Hungarian Panzer Division. Surrender and movement across the Enns River had to be completed prior to midnight.

In the town of Landsberg in Bavaria, a Hungarian garrison stood in parade formation to surrender as Americans forces advanced through the area very late in the war.^[29] A few Hungarian soldiers ended the war in Denmark in some of the last territory not yet occupied by the Allies.

List of major engagements

This is a list of battles and other combat operations in World War II in which Hungarian forces took part.

Battle	Date	Location	Hungary and its allies	Enemies	Issue
Invasion of Yugoslavia	6 – 18 April 1941	Yugoslavia	Germany  Hungary  Italy	Yugoslavia	Victory
Operation Barbarossa	22 June – 5 December 1941	Soviet Union	Germany  Romania  Finland  Italy  Hungary  Slovakia  Croatia	Soviet Union	Defeat
Battle of Uman	15 July – 8 August 1941	Soviet Union	Germany  Romania  Hungary  Slovakia  Croatia	Soviet Union	Victory
Case Blue	28 June – 24 November 1942	Soviet Union	Germany  Italy  Romania  Hungary  Slovakia  Croatia	Soviet Union	Defeat
First Battle of Voronezh	28 June – 24 July 1942	Soviet Union	Germany  Hungary	Soviet Union	Victory
Battle of Stalingrad	23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943	Soviet Union	Germany  Italy  Romania  Hungary  Croatia	Soviet Union	Defeat
Battle of Nikolayevka	13 – 26 January 1943	Soviet Union	Italy  Germany  Hungary	Soviet Union	Victory
Ostrogozhsk–Rossosh Offensive	13 January – 3 March 1943	Soviet Union	Hungary  Italy	Soviet Union	Defeat
Second Battle of Voronezh	24 January – 17 February 1943	Soviet Union	Germany  Hungary	Soviet Union	Defeat
Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive	13 July – 29 August 1944	Ukraine/Poland	Germany  Hungary	Soviet Union  Polish Underground State	Defeat
Battle of Turda	5 September – 8 October 1944	Romania	Germany  Hungary	Soviet Union  Romania	Defeat
Battle of the Dukla Pass	8 September – 28 October 1944	Poland/Slovakia	Germany  Hungary	Soviet Union Czechoslovakia	Indecisive
Battle of Păuliș	14 – 19 September 1944	Romania	Hungary	Romania	Defeat
Battle of Debrecen	6 – 29 October 1944	Hungary	Germany Hungary	Soviet Union  Romania	Defeat
Budapest Offensive	29 October 1944 – 13 February 1945	Hungary	Germany Hungary	Soviet Union  Romania	Defeat
Siege of Budapest	29 December 1944 – 13 February 1945	Hungary	Germany Hungary	Soviet Union  Romania	Defeat
Battle of Poznań	24 January – 23 February 1945	Poland	Germany Hungary	Soviet Union Poland	Defeat
Operation Spring Awakening	6 – 16 March 1945	Hungary	Germany Hungary	Soviet Union  Bulgaria Yugoslav Partisans	Defeat
Western Allied invasion of Germany	22 March – 8 May 1945	Germany	Germany Hungary	France Poland  Norway  Denmark  Netherlands  Belgium	Defeat
Nagykanizsa–Körmend Offensive	26 March – 15 April 1945	Hungary	Germany Hungary  Croatia	Soviet Union  Bulgaria Yugoslav Partisans	Defeat
Vienna Offensive	2 – 13 April 1945	Austria	Germany Hungary	Soviet Union  Bulgaria Austrian resistance	Defeat
Prague Offensive	6 – 11 May 1945	Czechoslovakia	Germany Hungary  Slovakia	Czechoslovakia  Romania Russian Liberation Army	Defeat

Oppression at home

The Holocaust

On 19 March 1944 German troops occupied Hungary, prime minister Miklós Kállay was deposed and soon mass deportations of Jews to German

Sztojay, unlike previous prime ministers, answered mostly to Berlin and was thus able to act independently of Horthy. However, reports of the conditions in the concentration camps led the admiral to resist his policies.

Carpatho-Ruthenia

after their arrival at the Auschwitz deathcamp (May/June 1944). Photo from the Auschwitz Album.

In early July 1944, Horthy stopped the deportations, and after the failed attempt on Hitler's life, the Germans backed off from pressing Horthy's regime to continue further, large-scale deportations, although some smaller groups continued to be deported by train. In late August, Horthy refused Eichmann's request to restart the deportations. Himmler ordered Eichmann to leave Budapest.[31]

Forced labor

The

system was introduced in Hungary in 1939. The system affected primarily the Jewish population, but many people belonging to minorities, sectarians, leftists and Roma were also inducted.

Thirty-five thousand to 40,000 forced laborers, mostly Jews or of Jewish origin, served in the Hungarian Second Army, which fought in the USSR (see below). Eighty percent of them—28,000 to 32,000 people—never returned; they died either on the battlefield or in captivity.

Approximately half of the 6,000 Jewish forced laborers working in the copper mines in Bor, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) were executed by the Germans during the death march from Bor to Győr in August–October 1944, including the 35-year-old poet Miklós Radnóti, shot at the Hungarian village of Abda for being too weak to continue after a savage beating.^[32][33]

Resistance movement

In autumn of 1941 anti-German demonstrations took place in Hungary. On 15 March 1942, the anniversary of the outbreak of the 1848–49 War of Independence, a crowd of 8,000 people gathered at the Sándor Petőfi monument in Budapest to demand an "independent democratic Hungary". The underground Hungarian Communist Party published a newspaper and leaflets, 500 communist activists were arrested and the party's leaders Ferenc Rózsa and Zoltán Schönherz were executed.^{[citation needed]}

The Hungarian underground opposition contributed little to the military defeat of Nazism. In July 1943 the

]

Various opposition groups deprived of their leaders most of whom had been arrested by the Gestapo after the German occupation in March 1944 joined forces in May 1944 in the Communist-inspired Hungarian Front (Magyar Front). They demanded a "new struggle of liberation" against the German occupation forces and their collaborators and called for the creation of a new democratic Hungary after the war. The representatives of the Hungarian Front, being informed by Horthy of plans for an armistice on 11 October, founded the Committee of Liberation of the Hungarian National Uprising on 11 November 1944. Although immediately weakened by the arrest and execution of its leaders, it called for an armed uprising against the German forces which took the form of limited isolated partisan actions and attacks on German military installations.^[34]

During the first months of Arrow Cross rule, resistors infiltrated the newly formed KISKA security division and used it as legal cover.^[35]

Peace treaty

By 2 May 1945, Hitler was dead and

^: 298

The

population exchange

" between Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

On 1 February 1946, the

End of Communism in Hungary

.

See also

• Hungary in World War I
• Hungary between the World Wars
• Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946)

Notes

References and further reading

• Armour, Ian. "Hungary" in The Oxford Companion to World War II edited by I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot (2001) pp 548–553.
• Borhi, László. "Secret Peace Overtures, the Holocaust, and Allied Strategy vis-à-vis Germany: Hungary in the Vortex of World War II." Journal of Cold War Studies 14.2 (2012): 29-67.
• Braham, Randolph
  (1981). The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary. Columbia University Press.
• Case, Holly. Between states: the Transylvanian question and the European idea during World War II (Stanford UP, 2009).
• Cesarani, D. ed. Genocide and Rescue: The Holocaust in Hungary (Oxford Up, 1997).
• Cornelius, Deborah S. Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron (Fordham UP, 2011).
• Czettler, Antal. "Miklos Kallay's attempts to preserve Hungary's independence." Hungarian Quarterly 41.159 (2000): 88-103.
• Dollinger, Hans. The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: A Pictorial History of the Final Days of World War II (1967)
• Eby, Cecil D. Hungary at war: civilians and soldiers in World War II (Penn State Press, 1998).
• Don, Yehuda. "The Economic Effect of Antisemitic Discrimination: Hungarian Anti-Jewish Legislation, 1938-1944." Jewish Social Studies 48.1 (1986): 63-82 online.
• Dreisziger, N. F. "Bridges to the West: The Horthy Regime's ‘Reinsurance Policies’ in 1941." War & Society 7.1 (1989): 1-23.
• Fenyo, D. Hitler, Horthy, and Hungary: German-Hungarian Relations, 1941–1944 (Yale UP, 1972).
• Fenyö, Mario D. (1969). "Some Aspects of Hungary's Participation in World War II". East European Quarterly. 3 (2): 219–29.
• Herczl, Moshe Y. Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry (1993)online
• Jeszenszky, Géza. "The Controversy About 1944 in Hungary and the Escape of Budapest’s Jews from Deportation. A Response." Hungarian Cultural Studies 13 (2020): 67-74 online.
• Juhász, Gyula. "The Hungarian Peace-feelers and the Allies in 1943." Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 26.3/4 (1980): 345-377 online
• Juhász, Gyula. "The German Occupation of Hungary." Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 11.1/4 (1965): 261-283 online
• Juhász, G. Hungarian Foreign Policy 1919–1945 (Budapest, 1979).
• Kenez, Peter. Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets: the Establishment of the Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944-1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
• Kertesz, Stephen D. "The Methods of Communist Conquest: Hungary 1944-1947." World Politics (1950): 20-54 online.
• Kertesz, Stephen D. Diplomacy in a Whirlpool: Hungary Between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (U of Notre Dame Press, 1953). online
• Macartney, C. A. October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary 1929–1945 2 vols. (Edinburgh UP, 1956–7).
• Montgomery, John Flournoy. Hungary: The Unwilling Satellite (Pickle Partners Publishing, 2018).
• Pelényi, John. "The Secret Plan for a Hungarian Government in the West at the Outbreak of World War II." Journal of Modern History 36.2 (1964): 170-177. online
• Sakmyster, Thomas L. Hungary's Admiral on Horseback: Milós Horthy, 1918-1944 (Eastern European Monographs, 1994).
• Sakmyster, Thomas. "Miklos Horthy aud the Allies, 1945-1946: Two Documents." Hungarian Studies Review 23.1 (1996) online.
• Sipos, Péter et al. "The Policy of the United States towards Hungary during the Second World War" Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum (1983) 29#1 pp 79–110 online.
• Stafford, David. Endgame, 1945: The Missing Final Chapter of World War II. Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2007.
  ISBN 978-0-31610-980-2
• Szabo, Laszlo Pal; Thomas, Nigel (2008). The Royal Hungarian Army in World War II. New York: Osprey. p. 48.
  ISBN 978-1-84603-324-7
  .
• Ungváry, Krisztián. The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II (Yale UP, 2005).
• Ungváry, K. Battle for Budapest: 100 Days in World War II (2003).
• Vági, Zoltán, László Csősz, and Gábor Kádár. The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a genocide. (AltaMira Press, 2013).

External links

• Axis History Factbook — Hungary
• WW2 bunkers, fortifications, maps and museums (in English and Hungarian)
• Map
• Map